The State of Play: 2024 (Ep. 9)

They're back! Season 2 of the GameCraft podcast kicks off with Mitch and Blake introducing the new 8-episode season, followed by an analysis of the current health of the games business. Mitch and Blake discuss the paradoxical state of the business, where a "golden age" of content is facing some increasing financial headwinds. They compare the games business to the post-pandemic video streaming businesses, which have all faced difficult belt-tightening after a growth phase that produced some of the best content ever. They look at the implications of increasing consolidation in the business (i.e., Activision/Microsoft, Zynga/TakeTwo, etc.), the end of the ten year surfeit of cheap money (the "Zero Interest Rate Policy"), and, finally, the over-investment of private capital into studios to fund game creation. 

Om Podcasten

Gamecraft is a limited series about the modern history of the video game business. Beginning in the early 1990's, the video game business began a radical transformation from a console and PC packaged goods business into the highly complex, online, multi-platform business it is today. Game industry legend Mitch Lasky and game investor Blake Robbins go on a thematic tour of the last 30 years of gaming, exploring the origins of free-to-play, platform-based publishing, casual & mobile gaming, forever games, user-generated content, consoles, virtual reality, and in-game economies across the eight episodes of Season 1. In Season 2, Mitch and Blake are back with a new series analyzing the state of the video game business in 2024. They start with a macro view of the current business, before looking at some hot topics in gaming: the rise of powerful independent game studios, emerging markets for games around the world, how innovations in artificial intelligence will change game creation, and the renewed importance of intellectual property in the game business.